


No Fields Lay Fallow Forever

by librata



Series: To Gather Strength From My Deepest Roots [1]
Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Charles Xavier in a Wheelchair, Edie Lehnsherr Lives, Erik Has Feelings, Erik Lehnsherr Loves Charles Xavier, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, Injury, M/M, Married Life, Medical Trauma, Paralysis, Protective Erik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:53:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28684374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/librata/pseuds/librata
Summary: “Ma,” came Erik’s voice. Edie’s heart rate quickened. This did not sound like her Erik, the one who always called with breezy anecdotes or trifling complaints about his life in New York. She knew that he did not like to upset her, that he liked to pretend that everything was always wonderful. No, this Erik, the one on the other end of the phone, was full of panic.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Series: To Gather Strength From My Deepest Roots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2102469
Comments: 12
Kudos: 99





	No Fields Lay Fallow Forever

**Edie**

It was not yet 5am when Edie Lehnsherr was yanked from sleep by the tinny ring of her mobile phone. Groggily, she frowned as her eyes adjusted, wondering who on this wonderful green earth would be so rude to call her before dawn, and then that annoyance vanished entirely when she saw who it was.

“Erik, mein Süßer,” she answered, sitting upright in her dark bedroom. “It is midnight where you are, no? Is every—”

“Ma,” came Erik’s voice. Edie’s heart rate quickened. This did not sound like her Erik, the one who always called with breezy anecdotes or trifling complaints about his life in New York. She knew that he did not like to upset her, that he liked to pretend that everything was always wonderful. No, this Erik, the one on the other end of the phone, was full of panic. 

“Ma….I—Charles,” breathed her son, voice nearly cracking. “He...there was an accident, and—” There was a long pause, punctuated only by Erik’s labored breaths. “I d-don’t know if he’s alive, Mama.”

“Oh, Spatz.” Edie was on her feet by now, flooding the room with light from her bedside lamp. Somewhere, across an ocean, her son was beginning to cry, sobs erupting in breathless droves, and she could only play witness at the other end of a telephone. “What happened?”

“Slick roads, clumsy driver,” Erik managed to choke out. “I don’t know, it doesn’t matter—he’s in surgery right now and no one is telling me _anything_ , I’m sure that this means that he’s dead and I—”

“Erik,” Edie interrupted. “Mein Süßer, slow down. He is not dead, don—”

“You don’t know that!” her son roared back, causing Edie’s eyes to widen. Erik had never raised his voice to her like this. Not even as a teenager. When he spoke again, he seemed to have recovered some of that careful composure that he so liked to wear, but Edie had already ripped her wardrobe open and pulled out a handful of clothing. “Ma, I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose him…”

“I know,” she replied, a mask of calm. “I’m leaving for the airport now.”

“You do—”

“Send me the name of the hospital he’s at. I will have a taxi take me there.”

There was another pause, undoubtedly filled with Erik trying to rationalize an argument as to why she shouldn’t come, and then he sniffled. “Scripps Mercy in Westchester.”

**Erik**

Plastic, Erik mused, was one of humanity’s most horrific inventions. Yes, he knew that it allowed for accessible, sterile transport of precious commodities and yes, he was aware that without it, the world would be a vastly different place, but its lifeless polymers and auraless existence never failed to grate at patience.

Of course, it wasn’t the first time that he’d been placed into a pair of plastic zip-tie handcuffs (and he was sure that it wouldn’t be the last), but as he stared at his bound wrists, his hatred toward the material mounted even further. Every ion in the hospital security office sang to him—it would take absolutely nothing out of him to yank the legs off of the tables, the hands of the wall clock, a paperclip from the desk out of its resting place and slice the dead plastic from his body. 

He thought of Charles. Stretched across some narrow bed with an ugly knot of equipment snaking over his face and body. Some ghastly tube shoved down his throat and more up his nose. His nose, which was the only inch of his face not covered in either a sick purple welt or a scarcely healed scratch. 

_“We can’t let him go in this state,”_ an exasperated nurse had muttered to the hospital security guard pinning Erik to the wall. _“He’s not stable.”_

 _“I’ll get the police down here,”_ the gruff man replied, snapping the plastic cuffs into place.

Somehow, through the red he had been seeing, Erik had managed to sputter that, no, he didn’t need to go to jail, his mother had just landed and would be here within the hour and that he would let her take him home and that he was very, very sorry for threatening to inject an ICU doctor with the Bubonic Plague if she didn’t stop pussyfooting around some real answers. The local cops weren’t particularly fond of Erik; who knew how hard they’d push to get the hospital to charge him with some idiotic thing in order to hold him longer. Keep him away from Charles.

“Erik.”

A voice with a familiar blend of care and consternation had Erik glancing upward from his wrists. In the doorway beside the security guard stood his mother, so obviously exhausted from a long day of travel. She had one hand clasped around the handle of a suitcase and another extended toward him, as if beckoning him toward her.  
She looked out of place here. His mother did not belong in the stark, unfriendly setting of a hospital. None of them did. They should be greeting her at the airport instead, eager to whisk her off to a restaurant that they’re sure she would love. Charles should be at his side. 

_Charles._

“Ma,” he murmured, unwilling, despite himself, to let the security guard see him become emotional at the sight of his mother. Wordlessly, he stood up from his chair and travelled toward her until her arms pulled him close. Her embrace brought untold comfort, comfort which he did not know he had needed.

“How many times will I have to pick you up from jail?” she whispered in his ear in German, but there was a note of worry in her tone and it nearly made Erik’s knees buckle.

Propelled by the quaking in his stomach, Erik lifted his bound wrists and shot the guard a dirty look. “Would you like these back, now?”

The guard paid Erik an equally dirty look, but tramped to the desk nearest the wall and extracted a pair of scissors from a drawer. Before he could even turn back toward them, the scissors flew from the guard’s clumsy fingers, snipped Erik’s wrists free of the plastic, and then settled back on the desktop with a clatter. 

He could feel his mother’s exasperation at his side, but the guard’s dumbfounded maw was enough to make the gesture worth it. A reminder that he could have set himself free all along, that their silly charades were nothing more than just that, that Erik had agreed to play along of his own accord.

With tight lips, the guard retrieved Erik’s apprehended car keys and held them tight, as if his meager grip would keep them safe from Erik’s jurisdiction. He held them out to Edie, who accepted them. “He’s in no condition to drive. You can make sure he gets home, and stays there?”

“Of course,” said Edie kindly, taking Erik’s elbow. “Thank you for looking after my son.” With that, Edie was leading Erik from the office before he could even sneer at the guard one more time. 

The sky was dark when the pair exited the double doors of the hospital—was it night again already? Or had it been night twice, now? The call had come in at 10:12pm and Erik had arrived at the hospital sometime shortly after that, but he hadn’t any idea how long he had spent there. He’d stared at the clock while Charles was in surgery, of course, but that was to count elapsed seconds rather than the time of day. The two hadn’t registered simultaneously.

“Erik,” Edie said again, and removed from the loud bustle of the hospital’s innards, Erik knew that her tone was filled only with concern, now.

“I’ll stay here,” he muttered, scanning the exterior for a place where he might be able to conceal himself until his three-day ban expired. There was a thick hedgerow on the far side of the parking lot that might suit. “You can take my car home and stay there, I’ll write down the directions—”

“That is unreasonable,” Edie affirmed, and tugged on his elbow ever so slightly. “You will not _camp_ here outside the hospital, Erik.”

Somewhere in the recesses of his brain, Erik knew that she was right, that it was more than unreasonable to suggest that he would spend the next two days staked out in the parking lot, waiting for the very moment that he could re-enter the premises, but leaving was far worse. 

Not a single doctor or nurse had been able to give Erik a decent update on his husband’s condition; he was alive but in critical condition, had some sort of spinal cord injury but they couldn’t be sure of the extent. They’d talked about all they’d done during the surgery, all the shrapnel they removed from his body, all the fluid they’d drained, how quickly they acted. As if Erik gave a damn about any of that while Charles’s fate was still so uncertain. The only definitive answer he had gotten was that the recovery process would be lengthy, _if_ Charles woke up at all.

Erik felt his throat begin to swell as he thought about those words, said so matter-of-factly, as if it was no big deal whether or not Charles opened his eyes. He _had_ to open his eyes. He had to come home.

“It’s late, Spatz, and I’m sure that you haven’t slept,” Edie continued, nudging Erik toward the parking lot. “You’re no use to Charles if you keel over from exhaustion.”

He knew that Edie was right. It would benefit them all if he went home, slept, ate, and got himself ready to come back to Charles’s side. “He’s all alone in there, Ma,” Erik said quietly after a moment, glancing back at the foreboding structure. “It’s not fair to leave him alone.”

Edie rubbed circles into Erik’s back while still urging him into the parking lot. She pressed the fob and when a set of brake lights flashed, she began to lead them toward Erik’s parked car. “He won’t be alone. Once I get you home, I’ll be coming back.”

Erik glanced down at his mother in surprise. “What? Mama, no, you don’t need to—”

“I don’t want him to be alone, either,” she replied softly, and Erik felt his shoulders slump as tears sprang to his vision.

“Ma…”

Edie wiped her own eyes before opening the driver door of Erik’s Mercedes. “I know, Spatz. I know.”

**Charles**

The hum of the world returned to Charles slowly. It first made itself known in the low, stilted thoughts that trickled into Charles’s awareness. Fully-formed ideas were not yet clear, but Charles could register a general sense of determination and worry, two mental states that seemed as if they should clash with each other rather than work in tandem. All of the minds around him were unfamiliar aside from one, but he couldn’t quite place the owner of the quiet, thoughtful consciousness, the only one that remained near him as the others filtered in and out.

Next came noise. An artificial _beep_ pierced his eardrums rhythmically for a long while until he finally grew accustomed to it, but even then, Charles wished that someone would turn off whatever it was. During the downbeat of the beeping was a lower, deeper, toneless noise; an airy _whoosh_ followed by the sound of a full inhale. Between those sounds rang collections voices, footsteps, shuffling, and whirs. Sometimes they were near to him and at other times they sounded far away.

Touch followed sound, and this is where Charles began to register his own discomfort. Something stiff and tight encircled his torso, bracing his upper body in an immovable vice. His lips, he realized, were dry and chapped, but when he made to wet them, an object obstructed his attempt. There was something in his mouth, extending from beyond his body and down his throat, which also made swallowing difficult. A swift moment of panic crossed his brain when he tried to inhale and found his airway blocked by the object, but the panic subsided when, somehow, his lungs expanded to accept fresh oxygen anyway. Another stiff contraption clamped the object to his face so that even when he mustered up the strength for a vain struggle to push it from his mouth, everything remained where it was. 

Harsh fluorescence stung Charles’s eyes when they finally pried themselves open, and he squinted reflexively to lessen the pain. His vision was so blurred that, for a moment, Charles wondered if he was underwater somewhere, but a setting soon began to tune itself into focus. A large monitor with a series of metrics that his groggy brain couldn’t even begin to interpret. A rack with a tangle of tubes, wires, liquid-filled bags, and blinking screen. Bright lights, surfaces covered in alien-looking objects, a sink. 

His senses began to work together; slowly at first, and then humming to life like an engine after an icy winter. A dull but intense pain in his back caused him hiss around the tube in his throat, and when he did, something soft and warm tightened around his hand.

“Charles…?”

Charles’s eyes darted to his left at the sound of a voice, resting on a blurred figure for several moments before it finally materialized fully. 

In a stiff plastic chair sat his mother-in-law, her face a mask of exhaustion and concern. Both of her hands encircled Charles’s own and tightened even further as their eye contact lingered.

Edie? What was Edie doing here? What even _was_ here? Charles wracked his sluggish thoughts in pursuit of context. Had he and Erik flown to Germany? Had he mentioned that his mother would be visiting them in New York? Neither option seemed to fit.

“Oh, mein Süßer,” she murmured as she stood from her seat. “How wonderful it is to see you awake.” She leaned over and placed a kiss on his forehead before jamming at a button on a table at her side.

Moments later, a small flurry of people entered the room. Edie was forced to release Charles’s hand as the team surrounded his body, and even through his murky grasp on reality, he felt wayward without her grip, as if adrift with no anchor in an unfamiliar sea. 

Lights shone in his eyes. Fingers tapped at buttons on the monitors. Voices asked if he could hear them, Dr. Xavier and if so, please let them know. His low grunt seemed to satisfy their curiosity, and they chatted to each other for what felt like forever before turning their attention back to him.

A woman with kind eyes leaned directly over him to steal his attention. Her hand found its way to his own, but hers was cold where Edie’s had been warm. “Can you see me, Dr. Xavier? Blink once for yes and two for no, if that’s easier.”

One blink.

She offered a small, encouraging smile. “Do you know where you are right now?”

A hospital, Charles had gathered at last, but he still didn’t know why or how he was here, so he let his eyes close twice, allowing them to linger shut for a long while before opening them again halfway. 

The woman squeezed his fingers briefly. “You’re at Scripps Mercy Hospital. You were in a very serious car accident.”

A car accident? Charles tried to think back to his latest memory, but the path grew too convoluted, and he found himself lost. 

“You’re lucky to be alive, Dr. Xavier. Very, very lucky.”

Hours later, after all of the necessary exams had been completed, the breathing tube had been removed, and the medical staff had satisfied themselves with the knowledge that he could be left to rest, Charles found himself alone in the ICU room. Monitors still pinged and rang while medication and nutrients flowed through his veins via steady drips. Edie had been ushered out of the room before the doctors began their tests, so he was completely alone.

His thoughts were far clearer than they had been when he had just emerged from his comatose state, and they were beginning to spin beyond his control. Phrases like “spinal cord injury” and “complete paraplegia” echoed against the inside of his skull while visions of himself confined to a bed like this for the rest of his life took on a more detailed shape.

Hot tears fell in narrow streams down his cheeks, navigating barriers like the nasal cannula and various patches of healing wounds. It was overwhelming. Agonizing. Life, as he knew it, had died and what it would be reborn as was not something that Charles was looking forward to discovering. Anger, pain, and mourning encouraged those tears to come more quickly and soon, Charles was properly sobbing, but too stiff and sore to lift his hand to wipe the tears away. It made him cry even harder.

“Charles, Süßer.”

Charles craned his head toward the door, Edie’s form blurred by tears. For a moment, he tried to school his expression into something a bit more neutral, but quickly gave up and submitted to his sorrow. 

“I’m never going to walk again,” he croaked, throat still dry. “They said that unless massive advancements in medicine happen, there’s not any chance that I’ll ever walk again.” Saying it out loud intensified the gravity, twisting Charles’s insides into a knotted heap.

“Oh, Süßer,” she said quietly as she folded herself into the chair at his bedside once more. Her hand reached for Charles’s own once more and when those sure fingers closed around his, he couldn’t help but squeeze back. Her other hand found a tissue and used it to dab the tears from Charles’s cheeks, but they were soon replaced with a fresh stream. “I’m so, so very sorry.”

Charles sniffled and sobbed while clinging to Edie’s hand as if it were the only thing keeping him from flying away from the earth. She sat beside him in support, occasionally sopping up his tears while being mindful of his various facial injuries, but allowed him to cry and cry until he had nothing left to give.

After drying his face once more, Edie tightened her hold on his fingers. “It’s perfectly alright to be upset right now, Charles,” she said in her thick accent, voice both gentle and sure. “You can have anger, sadness, and fear if you need to have it.” She pushed a stray lock of damp hair from Charles’s forehead, and then looked into his eyes. “But one day, it will be better. You will leave this hospital, go back home, and continue to live your life. It may be different than you had envisioned, but it will continue. And you will be alright. You will adjust, and you will move on.”

It seemed like fiction, like one of those things that people tell others when they don’t know what to say, but when Charles briefly scanned her thoughts at a surface level, the one overarching feeling he sensed was conviction. Edie believed, with strength, what she was saying. She believed that Charles would be able to go back home and continue on with his life.

There was something reassuring about someone else believing in him, even when he didn’t.

Sniffling, Charles turned his eyes away. “It’s all going to be different now,” he said quietly, though his voice was steadier. “Everything. We have to fix up our house, my office. The lift at the university has been out of service for months, and—”

“Those are just _things,_ Charles,” Edie insisted, and Charles felt his gaze drawn back toward hers. “Your home and office can be amended. What won’t change is how much your family and friends love you, and you know that that is what is truly important.”

Before Charles could even ponder a response, a sharp realization waylaid his thoughts. “Erik,” he breathed, snapping his attention toward his mother-in-law. Why in the world was _she_ here, in this New York hospital, while Erik was nowhere to be found? “Where is he? Is he—oh, _God,_ he isn’t—”

“He’s perfectly alright,” Edie said quickly, clearly having sensed what Charles had been about to ask. “He is not here right now because he has been temporarily banned from the premises of this hospital.”

Charles blinked. “He...I’m sorry, what?”

Now Edie’s expression had changed into something that bordered on exasperation. “Yes, my son was apparently threatening your doctors and had to be restrained in the hospital security office,” she said stiffly, unable to suppress an eyeroll. “They only released him after I arrived and promised that I would take him home.”

Charles looked at Edie for some sign of a joke, but deep down, he knew that this fit his husband’s record perfectly. He could envision it immediately—Erik, angry and passionate, demanding information from doctors that they just couldn’t give, his perfectly practiced composure cracking _just enough_ to let his unbridled self through. 

“What an idiot,” Charles breathed, although there was just a sliver of fondness threaded throughout. “Threatening the people tasked with saving my life.”

“It was like he was a boy again,” Edie agreed. The barest hint of a smile ghosted across her lips, too. “I can’t tell you how many times I had to retrieve him from his school principal’s office for fighting with other children.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes,” Edie nodded, and offered a small but genuine smile, now. “He would look up at me with his bottom lip out and his eyebrows pushed down and explain to me, for hours on end, why he had been in the right all along.” A warm chuckle reverberated from her chest, and she squeezed Charles’s hand tighter. “He thought of himself as...oh, what’s the word in English? Visionlat? Vigiland?”

“Vigilante?”

“Yes, that’s it,” she smiled. “A little _vigilante_ with the brightest red cheeks.”

The mental image of his husband, all angles and poise, as a youngster pugilising other children on the playground made Charles smile as well. “I suppose some things never change,” he said.

“Some things never change,” agreed Edie. “My Erik will be himself until his final day.”

Erik, who loved so fiercely that he got himself banned from the hospital, who Charles knew loved _him_ with an intensity that still sent his head spinning. 

Perhaps many things in his life would change after this, but if there was one constant, it would be Erik. And that, Charles figured, would be enough. More than enough.

**Author's Note:**

>  _presses nose to screen_  
>  Commint?


End file.
